1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods of interfacing with multi-point input devices, and multi-point input systems that employ interface techniques.
2. Description of the Related Art
So-called touch screen displays are well known and common in many industrial applications. As an example, most bank ATMs use touch screen displays. As the utility of these types of displays increases, displays within home and business, including televisions and computer monitors, are increasingly becoming touch sensitive.
Recently, multi-touch input devices are becoming more available for various uses due to advancements in relevant touch sensing technologies, reductions in cost, and other factors. Multi-touch input devices, by definition, are capable of detecting multiple inputs simultaneously. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/833,908 to Han, filed Aug. 3, 2007, U.S. Patent Application No. 60/821,325 to Han, filed Aug. 3, 2006, and U.S. Patent Application No. 60/953,966 to Han, filed Aug. 3, 2007, all assigned to the assignee of the present invention, identify various technologies and publications within the field, and further describe additional advancements in multi-touch sensing through frustrated total internal reflection. U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/833,908, 60/821,325 and 60/953,966 are incorporated fully herein by reference.
Interface control technology, including interfacing techniques, has been widely studied. The following publications explore various concepts, methodologies and techniques in this area: Buxton, W., Hill, R., and Rowley, P., “Issues and Techniques in Touch-Sensitive Tablet Input,” Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques SIGGRAPH '85, ACM Press, New York, N.Y., 215-224 (1985); Michael Chen, “A Study in Interactive 3-D Rotation Using 2-D Control Devices,” Computer Graphics, Vol. 22, No. 4, 121-129 (1988); K. Shoemake, “ARCBALL: A User Interface for Specifying Three-Dimensional Orientation Using a Mouse,” Proceedings of the conference on Graphics interface '92, 151-156 (1992); Ken Hinckley, “Haptic Issues for Virtual Manipulation,” A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, section 6.1-6.3 (1996), from the website http://research.microsoft.com/Users/kenh/thesis/front.htm; Dietz, P. and Leigh, D., “DiamondTouch: A Multi-User Touch Technology,” Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Orlando, Fla., Nov. 11-14, 2001), UIST '01. ACM Press, New York, N.Y., 219-226 (2001); Lee, S., Buxton, W. and Smith, K. C., “A Multi-Touch Three Dimensional Touch-Sensitive Tablet,” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Francisco, Calif., United States), CHI '85. ACM Press, New York, N.Y., 21-25 (1985); Malik, S. and Laszlo, J., “Visual Touchpad: A Two-Handed Gestural Input Device,” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (State College, Pa., USA, Oct. 13-15, 2004), ICMI '04. ACM Press, New York, N.Y., 289-296 (2004); Rekimoto, J., “SmartSkin: An Infrastructure for Freehand Manipulation on Interactive Surfaces,” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI '02, ACM Press, New York, N.Y., 113-120 (2002); Westerman, W., Elias, J. G., and Hedge, A., “Multi-Touch: A New Tactile 2-D Gesture Interface for Human-Computer Interaction,” Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 45th Annual Meeting (Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn., October 2001), 632-636 (2001); Wilson, A. D., “TouchLight: An Imaging Touch Screen and Display for Gesture-Based Interaction,” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (State College, Pa., USA, Oct. 13-15, 2004), ICMI '04. ACM Press, New York, N.Y., 69-76 (2004); and Wu, M. and Balakrishnan, R., “Multi-Finger and Whole Hand Gestural Interaction Techniques for Multi-User Tabletop Displays,” Proceedings of the 16th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Vancouver, Canada, Nov. 2-5, 2003), UIST '03, ACM Press, New York, N.Y., 193-202 (2003), each of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Various publications explore two-handed input. These include: R. Balakrishnan and K. Hinckley, “Symmetric bimanual interaction,” CHI '00: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 33-40 (2000); R. Balakrishnan and G. Kurtenbach, “Exploring bimanual camera control and object manipulation in 3D graphics interfaces,” CHI '99: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 56-63 (1999); Y. Guiard, “Asymmetric division of labor in human skilled bimanual action: The kinetic chain as a model,” Journal of Motor Behavior, 19(4):486-517 (1987); K. Hinckley, R. Pausch, J. C. Goble, and N. F. Kassell, “Passive real-world interface props for neurosurgical visualization,” CHI '94: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 452-458 (1994); G. Kurtenbach, G. Fitzmaurice, T. Baudel, and B. Buxton, “The design of a GUI paradigm based on Tablets, Two-hands, and Transparency,” CHI '97: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 35-42 (1997); I. Llamas, B. Kim, J. Gargus, J. Rossignac, and C. D. Shaw, “Twister: a space-warp operator for the two-handed editing of 3D shapes,” ACM Transactions on Graphics, 22(3):663-668 (2003); and R. Zeleznik, A. Forsberg, and P. Strauss, “Two pointer input for 3D interaction,” SI3D '97: Proceedings of the 1997 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics, 115-120 (1997). Each of these publications is incorporated herein by reference.
Other patent publications in this field include U.S. Patent Publication Nos. 2006/0026521, 2006/0026535, 2006/0053387, 2006/0085757, 2006/0033724, 2006/0161870, 2006/0161871, and 2006/0026535, each of which is incorporated herein by reference.